Republican says Perry looks like a winner

Certain politicians are simply winners, and America likes winners, especially when the chips are down. Being born with natural advantages (looks, brains, charm, charisma) and honed into hail-fellows-well-met by years of self-perpetuating approbation, they have a practiced knack for making other people feel good. In fact, they can say almost anything, and all it seems to do is endear them to curious observers and (therefore) to enrage their natural enemies. Rick Perry is one of those people, and because of that Barack Obama should worry about him. A lot.

I’m a devout Republican, but I was a fan of Bill Clinton almost as much as I was of Ronald Reagan. I’m talking about personal appeal more than policy, and although Clinton was more self-aware than Reagan (and therefore more manipulative), both men had a magnetism that confounded their critics and shielded them from the downside of vanity. And that’s the problem with Obama, relatively speaking: his vanity is too fragile, his confidence insufficiently natural. It causes him to look down his nose reflexively, sneer and – worst of all – get caught at it. Did you ever see that happen to Clinton or Reagan? By comparison, did you see Obama’s responses to tough questions on his heartland road tour?

Now, there is no doubt that President Obama has charisma: it wasn’t just the novelty of a mixed-race candidate and the terror of the market crash that led him to victory in 2008. Something real caused millions of Americans to pour their hopes into him, and most of that was personal, not policy-driven. But the stress of a nearly-intractable economic situation and congressional obstinance has combined with his eerily-Nixonian defensiveness to erode the happy-warrior armor and expose something less appealing, less intriguing, and more vulnerable to a stronger personality. It is likely that another 14 months of strident and negative “it’s all their fault” campaigning of the type offered on his bus tour will merely reinforce this emerging image of an insecure and ineffectual whiner.

With the economy likely to still be staggering and unemployment likely to be near its current level, Rick Perry may not even have to be all that good to win. Why, he could even be a bone-headed, reactionary actor from California, or a grease-slick, say-anything governor from Podunk, Ark., and win by a landslide.